Classic...

I missed my work out this morning--bummer. My van is in Oakland, with my husband and the wrestling team he coaches. We are out of a number of food staples (including milk) and we are expecting company for dinner tomorrow evening. For a laugh, I decided to walk to the grocery store with Clare in the wagon and Lorien and Wyatt on their bikes. I made my shopping list and headed over to the grocery store. (Here is where the tale takes an interesting turn.) This was not just a quick pop into the grocery for a loaf of bread this was a trip to feed my family for a week. It was four gallons of milk, it was fresh chicken breast for Sunday dinner, it was cereal, apples, bananas, broccoli , carrots and bagged salad. It was canned goods on sale and dairy products we were out of. It was eggs, people, EGGS! I ignorantly tossed whipped cream and olive oil into my grocery cart--completely forgetting the fact that I had not come to the grocery store in my van but in a red. plastic. wagon... The sobering fact of the wagon came all to soon when I wheeled my overflowing cart of paid groceries out the door and was halted by said wagon. My optimism prevailed, "No problem!" I thought. I loaded the milk into the wagon and using long forgotten Tetris skills I managed to fit most of the other groceries into the wagon (giving all of the produce a solid bruising in the process.). With most of the groceries balancing precariously atop the milk I turned my attention to the four cereal boxes that would not be squeezed into the wagon. Naturally, if my sweet children wanted to eat the cereal they were going to have to carry it home. I looked at their small bikes, their knobby knees, spindly legs and thin arms...perfect pack mules...of course. Attaching a plastic bag containing one box of cereal to each of their handle bars we headed home.

One block into the walk home, the youngest child who was forced out of the wagon by all the groceries ran a few paces ahead of me, tripped over her own feet and skinned her knee. With mule # 1 too far ahead to hear my screams of "Wait! Lorien, wait!" and mule #2 in hot pursuit I had no choice but to scoop up the crying baby and run to catch up. I am not a graceful runner and hauling 50 pounds of groceries one handed in a red wagon while balancing a crying toddler on my other arm does nothing to add to my running style. Mercifully, mule # 1 has about as much biking grace as I have running grace and several yards before I was about to sit down and cry, she lost her balance and fell over...onto a pile of rocks...effectively stopping her parade. With the unstoppable force of a speeding wagon behind me I had to keep running until I nearly collided with the sobbing Lorien. In the middle of my attempt to comfort both Lorien and Clare an elderly woman passed us on the sidewalk. She gave me a weak smile and kept on her way. At the time I thought she must not have spoken any English. However, as I reflect now, I think it is far more likely that upon seeing the scene before her (two screaming girls, a dirty faced boy and a crazy woman pulling a red wagon full of groceries) words simply failed her. She couldn't even muster the vocabulary to sympathise or scold and she was way too polite to give me the dirty look I deserved. After all, what kind of person makes a gigantic grocery run with a red wagon and two kiddy bikes? Well, a person who is in the odd habit of grossly overestimating her abilities, that's who.

I have come to the conclusion that I do not need to work out. Hauling 50 pounds of groceries up a steady incline to home will keep me in tip-top shape. More over, using all of my mental powers to will a wobbly 5 year old on a bike to stay on the side walk and out of the road will keep my brain out of Alzheimer's territory for a long time. I have everything under control...really.